Description: This report is a guide to the regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House Committee on Appropriations and Senate Subcommittee on Legislative Branch of the Senate Committee on Appropriations. It summarizes the current legislative status of the bill, its scope, major issues, funding levels, and related legislative activity.

Description: This report provides an overview of the major issues which have been raised recently in the Senate regarding the Judicial Nominations, Filibusters, and the Constitution: When a Majority Is Denied Its Right to Consent and in the press concerning the constitutionality of a Senate filibuster (i.e., extended debate) of a judicial nomination.

Description: The sunset concept provides for programs and agencies to terminate automatically on a periodic basis unless explicitly renewed by law. In recent years bills to create a federal sunset commission, modeled on the sunset review process in Texas, have been introduced. President Bush called for creation of a federal sunset commission in his FY2006 budget submission. Bills reflecting an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) draft proposal have been introduced (S. 1399, H.R. 3276, H.R. 3277). This report will be updated as events warrant.

Description: The recommendations of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission will automatically take effect unless, within a stated period after the recommendations are submitted to the House and Senate, Congress adopts a joint resolution of disapproval rejecting them in their entirety. Congressional consideration of this disapproval resolution is not governed by the regular rules of the House and Senate, but by special expedited or “fast track” procedures laid out in statute. This report describes these expedited parliamentary procedures and explains how they differ from the regular legislative processes of Congress.

Description: When the Senate or House Appropriations Committee reports an appropriations bill to the full Senate or House, respectively, the committee typically publishes a committee report explaining the bill. This fact sheet provides a brief overview of what these reports entail and the language used within them.

Description: This report focuses on the commission’s proposal, to consolidate appropriation and authorization functions in the existing Senate and House Select Intelligence Committees. The report (1) describes the proposal; (2) compares it to the existing committee system; (3) describes a 19th century precedent for consolidation; (4) provides selected arguments in favor of consolidation as well as against; (5) discusses two alternatives to consolidating authorization and appropriation functions: a Joint Committee on Intelligence and separate intelligence appropriations subcommittees in the Senate and House Committees on Appropriations; and (6) describes current legislation.

Description: This report describes the Senate Rule XIV, para. 2, which requires that bills and resolutions have three readings before passage, and that they be read twice before being referred to committee.

Description: Following a brief discussion of budget resolutions and the congressional budget process, this report examines the several ways in which budget levels and other matters included in budget resolutions may be revised or adjusted, the authorities that underpin the making of such revisions and adjustments, and actual practices of the House and Senate in this regard.

Description: The purposes of this report are to examine the Congress-court connection along several discrete, but overlapping, dimensions. First, the constitutional authority of Congress and the judiciary is summarized briefly. Second, the report highlights the court’s role as legislative-executive “umpire” and federal-state “referee” in our constitutional system. Third, the report discusses the court’s part in statutory interpretation as well as the diverse ways Congress may “check and balance” the judiciary. Fourth, the paper reviews several current controversies associated with the judicial nominations process. Fifth, the state of play with respect to the so-called “nuclear” or “constitutional” option for ending judicial filibusters is discussed along with the compromise that so far has averted use of this procedural maneuver in the Senate. Finally, the report closes with several observations about the judicial nominations process.